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EFF is leaving X

eff.org

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Re: EFF is leaving X

#371

Post by MaxL93 »

weirdmantis69 wrote: post #360
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

They are very demonstrably not making the same movement and I strongly feel like it would take someone trying to reason backwards from a predetermined conclusion to see this

Re: EFF is leaving X

#372

Post by conradfr »

nostrademons wrote: post #213
Brendinooo wrote: post #20

That statement pretty clearly shows that they have certain ideological concerns that they value more highly than the kind of stuff we tend to think the EFF primarily cares about (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). Through that lens, I guess it makes sense that they see TikTok, Instagram, and BlueSky as worth their time and presence but not X.

I had the opposite impression, that this decision was primarily economic in nature. People (or at least the sort of people interested in the EFF) simply aren't on X/Twitter anymore, and so it's not worth posting there.

But what is the cost of posting on X? Why do they even have a blue tick?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#373

Post by maltelau »

gred wrote: post #293
Legend2440 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EFF is and has always been a political activist organization. Of course they care about ideological concerns.

He's saying that they have ideological concerns beyond the ideological concerns you would tend to associate with the EFF (digital privacy, open source, patent trolling, etc). I for one am sad to see that this is the case. There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.

A free and open society is a prerequisite for the rights EFF fight for. We cannot enjoy the freedoms of digital privacy in a an authoritarian regime. The rights to fight for EFFs concerns are currently being threated by the fascist turn of the USA. Thus, the EFF and other likeminded organizations are very much justified in leaving X.

> There are fewer and fewer organizations protecting civil rights without being dragged into left/right tribalism.

I would rather challenge this image that civilization is declining, independently of the political forces in power. This is a common motif in facism; I'm reading from your comment something along the lines of: "once we had noble organizations that were pure and didn't bother with ideology -- now things are worse, and in fact those guys are dirty for engaging in politics". What's really happening is that power in the US has been seized by fanatics and you fucks (respectfully) are letting them get away with it.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#374

Post by xigoi »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #220
bakugo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The fact that their Threads account[0] is still active (remember that site? yeah, me neither, I had forgotten it existed until I saw it linked on eff.org's socials page) makes it clear that the opening statement about "the numbers not working out" is deceptive. You have to scroll down a bit further to find their real reason for preferring those sites: > people of color, queer folks, activists, and organizers…

You’re a little behind the times, mate. Threads has more daily active users than X and is growing quickly vs. the latter’s cratering usage rates. Demographics trend younger, too.

I still see links to X quite often. I don’t think I have ever seen a link to Threads.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#375

Post by lynndotpy »

pmdr wrote: post #234

> We'll Keep Fighting. Just Not on X Yeah, somewhere where regular people that aren't terminally online won't ever have the chance to see it. This is a dumb decision. I'd very much like for open, distributed social networks to win, but that's not a reality we'll be living in anytime soon. X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other alternative social media.

> X, for better or worse, gets you eyes, more so than any other alternative social media.

This is not true at all, and it's a silly statement. X isn't mainstream anymore, and the people who think it is are simply stuck in a bubble. I suspect you might be one of the "terminally online people" you're denigrating as not "regular people".

X's MAU is in the ballpark as Quora or Pinterest. "Pinterest gets you more eyes than any alternative social media" is a more defensible statement.

It's not even in the top 10. It's not 2010 any more, people are on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

If you read the rest of the post, they cite Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (which have 6x to 3x as many users), and they cite that their posts on X are getting only 3% the engagement they saw in 2018.

By their numbers, they are not getting "eyes" on X. Just to compare, their X post has 124 comments, 79 reblogs, and 337 likes, while their BlueSky post has 245 comments, 1400 reblogs, and 6.2K likes. Even their Mastodon post is getting more engagement than on X.

That's over 15x better ROI posting to BlueSky than on X.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#376

Post by intothemild »

weirdmantis69 wrote: post #360
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

When has that happened?

Re: EFF is leaving X

#377

Post by cosmic_cheese »

pirate787 wrote: post #307
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

I know exactly how my grandparents would've reacted because I've seen it first-hand, and it's ugly and carries precisely zero validity. It's not to be emulated any more than someone who was born in 1850's skepticism towards automobiles and airplanes is.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#378

Post by alterom »

highmastdon wrote: post #148
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

>What do you mean _exactly_? Covering your statement is a shroud of vagueness doesn’t help form an opinion, only infuse more polarisation

Oh come on. Everyone who's been paying attention enough to warrant having opinions on the subject knows what the reference is to.

But if you just came out of a cryogenic freeze, they're talking about:

1. Elon Musk appearing to be giving a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration [1]

2. Elon Musk espousing and propagating white supremacist views nearly on a daily basis[2]

3. Elon Musk openly supporting borderline Neo-Nazi[3][4] German AfD party[5]

4. Elon Musk promulgating the myth of "white genocide"[6]

I guess if you somehow missed all of that over the past few years, you wouldn't know what the parent comment is about.

But in that case, you shouldn't be taking a part in this conversation, or opining about what would "infuse[sic] more polarisation".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk...

[3] https://www.tpr.org/podcast/the-source/2024-07-31/frontline-...

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liais...

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/europe/elon-musk-germany-afd-...

[6] https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lhfn68

[3]

Re: EFF is leaving X

#379

Post by jrajav »

weirdmantis69 wrote: post #360
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

Only one of the individuals in this comparison has a Wikipedia page dedicated to the event and coverage of it.

Re: EFF is leaving X

#380

Post by stirfish »

weirdmantis69 wrote: post #360
davidw wrote: post #118

My grandparents were pretty WASPy, conservative people who lived in northern Idaho. And they hated the white supremacist/neonazi groups up there with a burning passion. They were of an age to remember people going off to fight in Germany and Asia against that kind of ideology. They would have been absolutely appalled and ashamed to see a business leader throwing those salutes and backing it up with talk of a "white h…

[flagged]

Personal question: are you a bot?
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